Random Shorts: Late Night Practice

The lighting was dim on the basketball court; if you could call it that. The ‘court’ was nothing more than a beatdown field with no real infrastructure. In certain spots the concrete gave way to patches of shrubbery; weeds that had grown over the years. The basketball posts were mere pieces of wood that had long ago gotten rotten; it seemed that they stood based on pure will power.

Jackson stood on the court, basketball in hand. His ball was worn from use; its outing had decayed to the point you could see the rubber lining inside. He was wearing his third pair of shoes which looked extremely odd on him; they weren’t even the same brand. Jackson himself was an odd sight. His eyes were blue where the neighbourhood bully had punched him earlier. His hands had a large cut; he had gotten caught on the fence when he stole a piece of bed for breakfast. Well it was yesterday’s lunch and dinner as well.

It took him thirty minutes to walk from his broken down ‘apartment’ in the blocks to the court; there was a closer one next to him but it belonged to one of the street gangs. Jackson learnt that the hard way. Jackson took shot after shot, making them all in the poorly lit environment. He was already sweaty from the walk here but that didn’t stop him from getting even more drenched.

It was extremely late at night when Jackson eventually finished; he had spent nearly three hours practising. Jackson picked up his ball and smiled. Sure, his life was hard right now; he was poor, he was puny and he wasn’t all that smart. But it was all practice. It was practice for the future, practice for the NBA, practice for his dream. It was all late night practice.